traditional trendsetters - Central Catholic High School :: K-Space ...

10 Alumni News Fall 2008RUNNING SPARKS CREATIVITYLEADS TO INVENTIONo be a great athlete, you must have the right technique.Tennis players practice their strokes over and over, baseballplayers take batting practice to perfect their swings, andbasketball players take thousands of shots. Repetition leads Ttomuscle memory, and the memory of the skill leads tosuccess. As a competitive runner, Joe Sparks ‘74 believes he has foundthe correct technique for success in his sport, and he has invented adevice to help perfect that technique.On Your MarkSparks works as a massage therapist and yoga instructor in Perrysburg.He began competing in triathlons in the 1990s, but he suffered a kneeinjury that required surgery. He did not want to give up running andcompeting, so he felt he needed to find a better way to run. At a coaches’clinic, he met Dr. Nicholas Romanov, a Russian sports scientist involvedwith the U.S.A. Triathlon Committee, who introduced him to the “posemethod” of running.“In every sport there are certain poses,” Sparks explains. “Running hasthe running pose, but it’s something that is never taught. Everythingthat you do involves certain movements, and to be the best at any sportrequires a certain skill, a way of perfecting that movement. There’s a wayto run correctly that uses gravity, but it’s never taught.”Sparks began studying all the drills created by Dr. Romanov andpracticed the drills for six months, only actually running when hecompeted in races. Surprisingly, he found that his running times keptgetting faster even though he wasn’t even running during training. Thatconvinced him that Dr. Romanov’s technique had merit.Sparks invited Dr. Romanov to Toledo in 2001 to present a clinic, andthen he began doing his own clinics throughout the Midwest to trainpeople in this technique. “People have spent so much time doing itwrong that changing their running technique is not easy,” Sparks says.“Running shoes are even designed around bad running habits becausethey guard against impact, which goes against gravity. Your heel doesn’ttouch the ground when you run. You run on the balls of your feet. Youjust need to lift your legs upward and lean forward to use gravity insteadof extraneous energy.”Get SetAs Sparks continued to present his clinics, he found that most peopledon’t want to do just the drills. They want to go out and run, to trainby running instead of just learning how to run. “I wanted to figure outhow to solve this, to find a way to teach people how to run while they’rerunning,” he recalls. “I came up with my EZ Run Belt so they would haveto do the running drill while they’re running. The belt forces you torun with your feet coming up underneath and it won’t let you take longstrides.”The EZ Run Belt fastens around a person’s waist and rubber tubingattaches it to the ankles. The tubing comes in different resistance levelsbased on speed and strength. The tubing mimics the hamstring and canbe hooked at various levels on the belt to adjust to the height of the user.Sparks says he got the idea from a friend’s mountain climbing belt. Hemade his first belt in February 2005 and sold the first one the followingDecember after refining the design. He has since sold about 400 beltsworldwide, the furthest one going to Australia.One Faith. One Community. One Mission.